Types of Wood Floor Boards:
At present, the available options for wood floor boards are solid wood floor, engineered wood floor, and thin veneer or laminate High Density Fiberboard (HDF) floor.
Solid wood floor is generally known as a higher price product, manufactured from solid block of timber. Solid wood floor is known to have less stability in climate change due to the inherent swelling-shrinking nature of wood. Solid wood floor is typically available in irregular sizes, with random widths and lengths. Though a solid wood floor can be installed using various different installation methods, their irregular sizes may prohibit certain installation types.
Engineered wood floor is typically manufactured to have the visual appearance of solid wood floor, and yet has better stability in climate change owing to the multiple directions of layers' grain. Its construction comprises noble wood top layer bonded to substrate material, to obtain the visual appearance and the surface durability of solid wood floor, which simultaneously have the structural integrity, stability and mechanical strength of engineered wood panel. The substrate material types differentiate engineered wood floor into: lumber-base engineered wood floor and plywood-base engineered wood floor. Engineered wood floor is manufactured in standard sizes and can be installed using any of the variety of installation types. Moreover, engineered wood floor does not need acclimatization, unlike solid wood floor which needs weeks of acclimatization prior to installation.
Laminate floor is typically mass produced and is manufactured and sold as an economical look-alike substitute for real wood floor. Laminate floor is manufactured from HDF (high density fiber) board with printed paper or film overlay on top, or alternatively, it may have a thin slice of wood veneer as a top layer. The mass production of laminate floors creates the market perception of a generic floor-covering product rather than a real wood flooring product.
Types of Lumber-base Engineered Wood Floor:
2-two layer lumber-base engineered wood floor is manufactured from noble wood top layer in long grain direction, and core layer of lumber slats assembled with grain direction across the top layer's grain.
3-layer lumber-base engineered wood floor is a configuration noble wood top layer in long grain direction, core layer lumber slats assembled with grain direction across the top layer's, and back layer of either wood veneer or laminated sawn lamellas with grain direction parallel to the top layer's grain.
Generally, the core layer is prepared from a range of coniferous/softwood species and tropical broad leaf/hardwood species. The lumber milling process produces various cutting directions: flat, quarter, semi quarter or rift sawn lumber slats. The mixed cutting directions of slats in the assembled core layer hardly gives a predictable dimensional stability characteristics in relation to the material's random shrinking-swelling directions, whilst the moisture content of the individual piece can hardly be homogeneous in relation to the drying time of the lumber pieces which have various cutting directions. This often creates the so called ‘telegraphic effect’, a wavy impression on the top layer's surface.